Gays Show They Know Just How To Get Job Done

Orlando will pass an ordinance providing job and housing protection to gays. Any doubt was erased at the public meeting this week before the Human Relations Board.

The gays won a solid victory. They had a big turnout, and they were organized, well-spoken and, most of all, well-behaved. That's no small feat at such a potentially explosive public hearing.

The opposition, meanwhile, self-destructed. Most simply did not grasp the concept of separation of church and state, even people who should have known better.

"As a minister I come on the side of God," said Jim Perry, once a member of the board. "This lifestyle is sin. Are we legislating and legalizing sin?"

Then came speaker Frank Vassell, who claimed the ordinance would condone bestiality.

"We ought to obey God rather than man," he said.

These people were sabotaging their own cause. They put any council members inclined to vote against the ordinance in an awkward position. By doing so, they would appear to be endorsing arguments that either are legally invalid or absurd.

You can't run a government by cherry-picking quotes from the Old Testament. We'd end up stoning women to death on Orange Avenue.

Even David Caton from the Florida Family Association grasped this fact.

Perhaps the state's leading homophobe, Caton was smart enough to leave religion out of his presentation.

He produced something a politician could base a vote on: Documentation that indicated that most gay discrimination complaints are groundless.

The only other legitimate argument came from Rosa Bailey, who said gays had not proved "a demonstrable pattern of discrimination'' as had blacks in the 1960s.

This is a sore spot in the gay-rights movement.

While many black leaders embrace the cause, the sentiment is by no means universal in the black community. Many blacks see gay rights as affluent white men piggybacking their cause on the hard-fought victories of poor blacks who were beaten, lynched, kicked out of restaurants and mauled by police dogs.

Most blacks in Tampa were on the same side as the Ku Klux Klan in supporting a 1992 referendum that overturned the city's gay-rights ordinance.

Such arguments could provide cover for politicians opposing the ordinance. But they were drowned out by religious bigotry.

The gays, meanwhile, stayed on target.

They tried to demonstrate a need for the ordinance by recounting cases of job discrimination.

And as if recognizing that they needed more than anecdotal evidence, they backed it up with an emotional appeal. Simply put, they said many gays live in fear of being outed in the workplace. They can't put pictures of partners on their desk. They can't bring partners to work-sponsored events.

They can't go to gay events or back gay causes for fear it will get back to the boss. Some feared coming to this meeting.

That's not right for people who have done so much for Orlando, revitalizing neighborhoods and boosting property-tax revenues, among other things.

Not one of them attacked or condemned the other side.

It was an impressive presentation and sealed victory for their ordinance.